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Start-up 'Hello' Goes From Kickstarter To Target And Best Buy In Less Than 2 Years

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This article is more than 7 years old.

The launch of Hello's latest smart, sleep tracker is anything but sleepy.

On November 1st, the San Francisco start-up released a voice-responsive version of its Sense sleep monitor that will go on sale nationwide in Target and Best Buy stores. "We did Kickstarter, then direct sales, and Amazon," says Hello founder and CEO James Proud. "Now we are ready to go big time and take this mainstream. Target told us this is the biggest roll-out ever they've done for a brand new electronics product." The Sense launch will be Target's second recent bet on a start-up company. In September, Target debuted razors from Harry's in its 1,800 big-box stores.

Proud, a Thiel Fellow and FORBES Under 30 member, started Hello in 2012 and, in 2014, launched his first sleep tracker on the crowdfunding platform, Kickstarter. The goal: create a device to bridge health tracking and the smart home. The Kickstarter campaign for Sense (a baseball-sized orb that sits beside your bed and connects wirelessly to a small sensor on your pillow) made headlines after raising more than $2.4 million from 19,000 backers. Hello has since collected more than $40 million from Temasek Holdings, Allen &Co., and tech execs like Facebook's David Marcus, Xiaomi's Hugo Barra, and Spotify's Shakil Khan.

With his latest version of Sense, Proud adds an Amazon Echo-style voice interface and new sensors that monitor UV light, carbon monoxide, organic compounds (in addition to the current sensors that track noise, temperature, and humidity). "We’re the only start-up that is building devices you can talk to and it talks back," says Proud. "Voice is one of the best inputs for the home. You need to make the interaction as graceful and magical as possible. When you are setting the alarm, you don’t want to fiddle with a phone--you should be able to say 'wake me up at 7 am'."

Proud wouldn't comment on sales or user numbers of the current Sense tracker but did say the hardware has proven sticky with 93% of customers actively using the device 3-months after the purchase. "It's the inverse of what you see with wearable devices," says Proud.

Proud is out to turn the loyalty into a home platform. The newest version of Sense can talk to third party devices like Nest thermostats and Phillips Hue light bulbs. That way, you can control your bedroom temperature and light (with different modes for reading, sleeping, and waking up)--all by voice. "Smart home stuff today is so impersonal," says Proud. "The home should be reacting to you, not to you opening your phone and tapping a button."